Lessons & Reflections from the National Butterfly Center

Homero Gomez Gonzalez, Monarch conservation educator and activist, disappeared on January 13, 2020.

Disappeared? As in magically vanished?

NO.

“Disappeared” is a soft, stupid, sanitized way of saying he was abducted and murdered. This sterile word for a bloody crime is designed to prevent righteous indignation and hard-core realization that people working to protect and preserve our planet—something we should ALL work toward—are targeted, taken and executed.

In 2018, at least 164 environmental activists were murdered because they stood up and spoke out for sea turtles, polar bears, their river/safe drinking water, and yes, butterflies.

Prior to August, 2017, I must admit I was barely aware of this truth, too, although 201 known activists were killed that year. Since that time, since the day I was warned in no uncertain terms that my life was in danger, I have been forced to face the vagaries of my situation as an environmental activist.

Who wants to kill Water Protectors, those who fight for wild horses and wolves, robber frogs and rhinos, or those who speak for the butterflies? The profiteers and extractionists.

Environmentalists around the globe are murdered by agents of agribusiness, mining, logging, construction and fossil fuels. Their only goal is the rape of the land; their only god, money.

Why was I told to watch out; to understand the cost; to take precautions against the real, not imaginary, threat? Because there are billions of dollars on the line for border wall construction, behind which a liquified natural gas pipeline will ultimately be placed on the backs of the Rio Grande River; and billions more for the oil & gas oligarchs who own our politicians and police, and push laws that harm us all.

As President Trump seeks to gut the National Environmental Policy Act and take another $7 billion in funds from the Department of Defense (funds appropriated for military construction projects, like housing and schools on base, and veteran’s pensions) to award border wall construction contracts to campaign donors and cronies, those of us who make noise about it and stand, even briefly, in the way of their “progress” find ourselves the subjects of campaigns intended to terrorize, discredit and silence.

Are you ok with that?

A million times I have stated, “I didn’t sign up for this,” yet here I am. Am I more courageous than you? Am I dumb? Reckless? Devoid of common sense or reasons to walk away? No, not at all.

Do I want to die for the butterflies, for safe drinking water, for the Truth? Not really. But if I do, what will you do about it?

What can each of us do, today, before it is too late? Not in Mexico, Australia or the Arctic—but here, now, as North Dakota suffers an oil spill of almost 400,000 gallons; as Virginia paves over the largest nesting site for the gull-billed tern; and as the Trump administration prepares to veto the bill designed to protects us from “forever chemicals” in our water supply, what will you do to stop it?